Search This Blog

All Things Are Relative

Fed up with the
current state of events? Tired of hearing about the in-fighting of our
politicians? Frustrated with the gibberish peddled by our media? Consider this.

It is said that
travel broadens the mind. It’s true. There's nothing like wandering around the
wonderful old town of Jerusalem whilst tripping over M16 bedecked soldiers at
every street corner to bring home to you how tenuous day to day life can be for
some; nothing like seeing a small child walking alone along a 5 miles stretch
of empty road dwarfed by Andean mountains to make you appreciate the comfort
our own cocooned children enjoy on their 4x4 enshrouded school runs; nothing
like watching tens of thousands of honey buzzards drifting south over the
Caucuses of Batumi, in waves stretching back as far as the eye can see, to make
you realise in jaw dropping fashion how marvelous bird migration is.

Andean Highway

Honey Buzzards at Batumi, Georgia. We logged 88,000 that day.

Over the past
couple of years we have found ourselves using British Airways quite a lot.
Whilst sitting there with several tons of jet aircraft strapped to my backside
I like to distract myself by reading the articles John Simpson writes for their
magazine High Life. He is an excellent correspondent and never fails to
inspire. On a recent flight I had the pleasure of reading his account of the
experiences a fellow journalist had whilst working in Beijing during the 1970's
when China was a rather different place than it is now (?). The article can be
found here and essentially relates the story of how an initial frosty
relationship between a western journalist and a state fearing maid eventually
thawed revealing a heart rendering tale of persecution, repression, sad
intimacy and indomitable human spirit.

Ruminating on
this led me to recall an incident we, that is myself, Denise my wife, James my son
and Erin his wife to be, experienced whilst travelling through Rwanda a couple
of years back. We had just spent the most fantastic few days trekking mountain
gorillas and golden monkeys in Volcanos National Park. During this time we had
been accompanied by our smiling guide Ishmael who was now driving us back to Kigali.
It was a long, slow trip at the end of which we were to visit the genocide
museum. Ishmael was young, no older than my lad, and I asked him, in an
innocent and speculative way, whether he had any memories of the atrocious
events of that era. Although at first reluctant to give details, he hesitantly
began to open up. What followed was one of those episodes you never forget; a
tale so terrifyingly brutal that we could only listen in mute horror.

Ishmael was only
a young boy when in April 1994 the genocide began; on the traumatic day in
question he was with his mother and younger brother working at the top of a
hill when they saw the soldiers come. His brother was with his grandmother
further down the slope but fearing the worst his mother wouldn't let him go to
warn them, electing instead to hope their elevated position would save them. It
wasn't long before the machine guns rattled their death cries through the
forest below; before long the soldiers arrived at the hill top to finish their
slaughter. Ishmael’s mother had taught him that should he ever find himself so
threatened he was to play dead and hope the killers would overlook him and move
on. As the bullets rained into the women and children around them, both Ishmael,
his brother and his mother fell to the ground with dead bodies, really dead
bodies, falling on top and all around them. His younger brother had been shot
in both hands, had passed out with his blood leaking across all three. Not
satisfied with their work the uniformed thugs went about pumping a bullet into
each body to ensure all would never again breathe air. As sure death approached,
not daring to draw breath even shallowly, the soldiers suddenly stopped the
slaughter to greet the commanding officer that had arrived to inspect the
carnage. Ishmael had to listen as the soldiers presented the new arrival with a
'present': a row of babies that they had saved just for him. As this worthy
individual went about the important task of emptying his revolver into the new borne,
the rest of the troop began piling the bodies ready for burning. The pyre
flamed close to and red hot embers sparked over Ishmael’s bare legs, but
although the pain was excruciating he still did not move. A soldier, intent on
stoking the flames, stood on his mother’s head with heavy boots, but still she
did not flinch. They both awaited the inevitable, but by some miracle were not
hoisted into the flames; they were instead left to lie, covered in blood and
filth with legs and arms smoldering. The killing party moved on to reap harvest
from another village. Long minutes passed before Ishmael dared open an eye one
sliver.

Imagine if you
can for a moment the torment, the numbness, horror and fear that would envelop
you when you rise shaking and unbelieving from such an episode. Friends,
family, neighbours strewn dead and mutilated all around. Blood, smoldering
remains, shattered bodies that an hour ago were living, breathing human beings
now scattered and charred with no regard. Hell on earth and nobody outside
Rwanda knew or cared a damn. How do you rally the will to get to your feet, to
support one another to move down the hill to try to find your son and brother?
They never found him, at least not an identifiable carcass. They found shreds
of recognisable clothing, but the essential being was no more. Survive. Survive
and move on.

The next few
days comprised nothing but a painful, dangerous slow moving journey towards
salvation. They picked up other traumatised strays on the way, but had to leave
behind one young girl whose injuries made her cry loudly. They couldn’t afford
to be heard and sacrificed this one waif for the good of those that stood some
chance of reaching the UN post undetected.

As quiet tears
trickled down his face, Ishmael finished his story leaving us all gazing out of
the windows at the passing lines of women and children walking to school and
market, lost in our own thoughts. When we reached the museum, Denise and I
couldn’t stomach completing the circuit and sought sanctuary in the fresh
African air watching modern day Rwanda buzzing past and healing bitter wounds. We
remembered seeing the images on TV; that was enough. To our surprise though, my
son and his wife to be forced themselves to walk through every exhibit, graphic
and grotesquely compelling, so that they fully appreciated the scale of an atrocity
committed over a three month period whilst they too were in their infancy. They
wanted to fully comprehend the depths of evil that lurk inside man when given a
justified ‘cause’ to kill.

We had seen
mountain gorillas the day before, serene, harmless and in harmony with
themselves and their surroundings. Today we had seen what their close relatives
supposedly more intelligent, civilized and wiser do to one another. Our minds
were certainly broadened that day.

So, in these days
of Brexit with turmoil on our pathetic financial markets when a read of the papers
predicts nothing but gloom, doom and the end of civilization as we know it,
pause for a minute and take a look around. There it’s not quite so bad really
is it? I think we will survive and retain our houses, our cars, our smart
phones and more importantly our lives and freedoms. Just over 20 years ago
nearly a million Rwandans lost everything and some 2 million more became
refugees. Having someone who lived through it tell his tale to you somehow
makes you look at the world quite differently. And he was still smiling. What price that kind of
education?

L to R - Me, Ishmael, James, Erin. Kigali, Rwanda 2014.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

There’s
a tree by the church. An Oak, twisted and gnarled, ivy clad and sentinel. It
grows by the wall; flint and brick, ancient and lichen encrusted, bowed and
bent, ravaged by time. Both wall and tree have seen some sights, seen the
passing of ages, the passage of time and man. What tales could they tell us? What
stories could they reveal? If only they could speak. Instead they stand there
silently through every extreme the seasons can deliver. They have seen some
weather this wall and tree, seen deep winter freeze, long summer drought,
torrential downpours and balmy autumn days when acorns hang plump and swollen
like grapes. They have lived through wars and peace, seen kings and queens
throned and deposed, seen man move from rural fidelity to cosmopolitan excess.
Yet still they sit there as ever they were. They are entwined, for what came
first? Surely the towering wall with a small, vulnerable sapling planted
alongside? But now the roles have reversed because the tree is so large …

Of all
the bird species that inhabit or visit Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s reserve at
Ranworth Broad, three are of particular consequence: great crested Grebe,
swallow and common tern. None of these species are rare of endangered, all can
be found in many other places, but in my opinion the trio combined serve to
make the site what it is. Why is this so? The answer I think lies in the fact
that all are showy birds, all are seen at their most colourful and loudest
during summer when the reserve itself is at its best and thronged with
holidaymakers. Additionally the day to day antics of the swallows and terns can
be viewed on screens positioned in the Visitor Centre allowing intimate access
into their lives, thus ensuring they find a place in people’s hearts. There is
no camera trained on the grebes but their courtship rituals and resulting humbug decorated chicks can be viewed
at close quarters every year and provide great entertainment for those who
watch them…

The
smell gave it away, that sickly sweet, rotten fish kind of smell. At first I
thought it was simply a stench arising from discarded fisherman’s pots, but no.
The source of this particular aroma could be found by looking a little more
closely at the beach where amongst the thousands of pebbles were thousands of
dead sea creatures; crabs, lobsters, starfish, and various other species of
marine life including dogfish and what I took to be mullet or smelt, too
decomposed to be sure. Unseeing, wrinkled eyes staring into a sombre grey sky,
the wind drying their rotting skins; born to a life of freedom under the
limitless sea, dead now and littered along the strandline. Lifeless waste from
a cruel sea wracked by strong wind and freezing temperatures.

Sheringham
beach a week after the snow storms; the toll of nature’s wrath all too clear.
Whilst the news bleated on about us humans stranded in our tin cans or unable
to spend our money on unnecessary crap from Tesco, the real effect of the
b…